Pinoys, when you complain against climate change, you complain
against what your own people, perhaps including you, may have done to Mother
Earth, for decades – abuse natural
resources.
The rice terraces are beautiful to tourists, Filipinos and
foreigners alike – but they are not so
beautiful when you consider the rice planted and the yield. Look at the
above image again – yellow swaths against greens – ricefields with soils poor in nutrients for any crop.
Truth to tell, the owners of those terraces are not earning enough, and so they leave
the area, or stay and complain about life.
It
is as if the terrace farmers have no choice. But there is! They just have not
been thinking the science of it. This
is a wide-reading agriculturist speaking.
Mar Berry of
World Agroforestry has written about it: “Coping With Climate Change Through
Agroforestry: The Experience Of The Ykalingas In The Philippines[1].”
I hate to say it against a fellow communicator, but Mr Berry’s article is 3
times not accurate. Thus:
1.
Steep
slopes & rocky soils.
He says, “The Ykalinga people practice bench terracing to maximize the use of
their land, which is usually composed of steep slopes and rocky soil.” No Sir:
Bench terracing is not maximizing use
of land – growing a food forest would be. No Sir: The land now occupied by the terraces
originally was not rocky at all; it
was rich in organic matter, but terracing removed all that natural goodness.
2.
Ykalingas
learning about agroforestry.
Mr Berry says, “To adapt, Ykalinga farmers in Kalinga, Cordillera
Administrative Region, Philippines are learning about agroforestry.” On the
contrary, Mr Berry, ages before ours, the Ykalingas were already “practicing”
agroforestry by allowing Mother Nature to grow the forests with all those foods
– plants and animals – for humans. What needs to be done now is to rethink those rice terraces.
In fact, the Ykalingas unlearned the growing of (that is, allowing to grow) the
natural food forest – now they have to relearn it.
3.
Bench
terracing as maximizing the use of the land.
What I can see is that the Ykalingas are neglecting agroforestry and insisting on the rice terraces as we
can see. To simplify, agroforestry is forest + farm – the rice terraces are
100% farm and zero forest. I hope the people of the Department of Agriculture in
the Cordilleras are teaching them to practice
agroforestry again, but right now what is seen is agro (rice
terraces) and what is unseen is forest (trees amid rice).
Mr Berry describes “the biophysical limitations in the area” as having “steep
slopes, rockiness and shallow soils prone to erosion.” He is correct about the
slopes and rockiness, but not the shallow soils
Originally, those were not
shallow soils, but because the natives did not return the organic matter lost
when they cleared the trees for rice, they slowly impoverished the soil, as
well as themselves!@517
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